CFOs vs. CPOs: Why they clash and how to bridge the gap

Procurement plays an important role as a strategic lever for growth. But when CPOs walk into the boardroom, that narrative can fall flat. Despite being tasked with driving complex initiatives around sustainability, innovation, and resilience, procurement leaders are still seen by CFOs as tactical cost enforcers.

The disconnect? Procurement teams speak in category insights and supplier benchmarks, while CFOs want crisp, financial narratives that connect directly to enterprise value. Until CPOs learn to frame their work in CFO language, translating complex analysis into data-driven, board-ready outcomes, their strategic potential risks being misunderstood or undervalued.

The misconception: Procurement’s value is purely tactical

Many CFOs underestimate procurement’s potential because they are conditioned to equate its impact with savings alone. When procurement delivers value beyond cost (like mitigating supplier risk, improving supply chain agility, or enabling ESG initiatives), those contributions often go unrecognized because they’re harder to quantify on a balance sheet.

Compounding this is a visibility issue. Procurement data is frequently fragmented, outdated, or misaligned with finance systems. That makes it difficult for CFOs to validate the ROI of procurement-led initiatives. In fact, surveys have shown that less than 40% of procurement leaders believe their function is viewed as a strategic partner by finance.

When procurement’s wins don’t show up in financial dashboards, it reinforces the false narrative that the function is reactive rather than transformative. To overcome this, organizations need more than better communication. They need structural alignment.

How to realign CPO and CFO goals

Bridging the gap between procurement and finance starts with redefining the partnership. Here’s how high-performing organizations are doing it:

1. Create a common language of value

Procurement has evolved from a tactical function to a strategic growth enabler, but many organizations haven’t updated the way they talk about its impact.

Without a shared language of value between finance and procurement, CPOs struggle to connect their contributions to the broader business strategy. Finance and procurement often talk past each other because they’re using different metrics to define success. Procurement success is defined in operational or sourcing terms. And finance is speaking in terms of margin, cash flow, and risk exposure. This creates a disconnect that erodes trust and limits cross-functional influence.

CPOs must translate procurement impact into financial terms (think total cost of ownership, working capital optimization, and supplier risk exposure) so that value is visible and verifiable to the CFO. If procurement can’t speak the language of financial impact, CFOs will look elsewhere for insight, and influence will shift away from sourcing to finance, IT, or even AI tools.

2. Centralize and contextualize data

In today’s fast-moving environment, decisions demand speed, accuracy, and alignment. Alignment that only happens when data is unified and contextualized

Procurement and finance often rely on disparate systems with inconsistent definitions of spend, categories, and supplier risk. Siloed, misclassified, or outdated data leads to duplicate efforts, missed savings opportunities, and unnecessary risk. Worse, it undermines the credibility of procurement in the eyes of finance.

Spend data without context is noise. CPOs and CFOs need a single source of truth that aligns procurement insights with financial strategy. That means standardizing how spend is classified, how savings are calculated, and how supplier performance is tracked across functions.

Ultimately, CFOs won’t act on data they don’t trust. When procurement brings forward insights from a clean, consolidated, and finance-aligned data foundation, they gain a seat at the table, and the confidence of finance leadership.

3. Bring procurement to the planning table

By the time procurement is asked to “execute” against a financial plan, it’s often too late to add strategic value.

Early involvement in planning gives CPOs the chance to surface risks, highlight cost drivers, and flag untapped savings before they become baked into budgets. This kind of foresight is particularly critical in today’s landscape of tariff volatility and supply chain disruption, where sourcing decisions can make or break a quarter.

When procurement is excluded, organizations miss out on the early warnings and commercial insights that could inform smarter spend decisions. Rather than being looped in after budgets are set, procurement should be embedded in financial planning from the start. This allows CPOs to flag potential savings opportunities, supply chain vulnerabilities, or sourcing risks early converting procurement into a risk mitigation partner, not just a budget enforcer.

4. Focus on outcomes, not just activity

CFOs don’t care how the sausage is made. They care about the impact it has on the bottom line.

That’s why CPOs are shifting their reporting focus from volume to value. This shift, supported by solutions and platforms that connect activity to impact, is essential to changing the perception of procurement as a back-office function to one of enterprise value creation.

Limiting the procurement narrative to inputs and activity metrics unintentionally reinforces the perception that it’s a back-office function, not a value driver. Procurement must go beyond reporting operational metrics like savings pipelines or contract volumes and instead tie its work to tangible business outcomes such as margin expansion, working capital improvements, or revenue enablement.

Instead of fixating on how many contracts were negotiated or how much was saved year-over-year, forward-looking teams measure outcomes. For example, were supplier innovations commercialized? Did risk-adjusted savings improve margins? Was procurement’s work reflected in EBITDA or revenue continuity? CFOs care about those outcomes, and procurement must show its fingerprints on them to earn credibility and influence.

5. Tie success to shared KPIs

Incentives shape behavior. If procurement and finance teams are rewarded for different outcomes, collaboration will always be limited.

Without aligned incentives, each function will pursue its own definition of success, leading to miscommunication, missed goals, and a lack of accountability when cross-functional initiatives stall. More importantly, CPOs and CFOs are more likely to collaborate when their success is measured in shared terms.

Aligning incentives creates a joint scorecard and reinforces shared priorities. Think of shared KPIs like supplier risk reduction, ESG compliance, or EBITDA impact. These build cross-functional trust and prevent finger-pointing when challenges arise. Organizations using this strategy are far more likely to unlock enterprise-wide efficiency and resilience. Without aligned accountability, even well-intentioned collaboration can unravel under pressure.

The bottom line: Alignment is a strategic advantage

CFOs and CPOs are both under pressure to deliver cost savings and support enterprise growth. But without shared goals and language, they’ll keep pulling in different directions. It's not about misaligned personalities, it's about aligning metrics, incentives, and data. When that happens, procurement shifts from a cost-cutting function into a value-generating partner. And in today's market, that shift is essential to the success of the business.

About the Author

Scott Macfee is the CEO of SpendHQ, a provider of enterprise spend intelligence and procurement performance management solutions. With more than two decades of experience leading technology companies, Scott is passionate about transforming procurement into a strategic, data-driven powerhouse, and a leading advocate for finance and procurement leaders to unlock their full potential by working from a shared understanding of value.

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